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Yes Virginia, this is exactly the kind of weird weather pattern that could be both a product of climate change, and a mere appetizer for what will come later this century. The flooding and winds were mostly moderate by disaster standards, but they were moderate over a huge region. Storm damage is a product not just of severity, it’s also directly related to population i.e., infrastructure. Plucky east coast residents are crawling, bailing and shoveling out now: [Read more…]

I;m down with a moderately lousy AS flare up watching some news and it’s all Sandy. Hurricane Sandy is now making landfall in southern New Jersey. She’s not a bad hurricane as far as bad hurricanes go, but she’s fixing to mutate into something novel. What makes this storm so unusual isn’t the wind or the rain, they are causing relatively minor and mostly moderate damage respectively as best we can tell or predict right now. It’s huge. For act two Sandy will feed a nor’easter just to the west of Sandy’s eye. All the moisture held by this vast heat engine is going to pour into a frigid layer of air and turn into snow and ice, it’s already starting. This is a hurricane powered blizzard in the making. Call it a Blizzacane or an ice-cane. It’s something we don’t see often, so no one knows exactly what sheets of ice and/or several feet of snow will do to communities and infrastructure when dumped into 50mph plus winds and widespread flooding.

The outer bands of Hurricane Sandy (Latest NWS Hurricane Center info) are looming over the eastern seaboard. The storm is so large that it could hit in DC, flood parts of New York, and still knock thousands of trees in North Carolina. Conboys of emergency vehicles are lined up, FEMA is set to swoop in and help. Which makes us wonder how Mitt Romney would deal with national emergencies: [Read more…]

If you live in the colored region of the storm track it’s time to decide if you are going to stay where you are or go somewhere else. A big part of what makes this storm dangerous is that it is huge, the actual wind speeds are likely to be tropical force or lower for most of the region. But sustained 50 MPH plus winds combined with rain and a huge storm surge can definitely knock out power and basic utilities for millions of people: [Read more…]

Hurricane Sandy isn’t the latest or strongest Atlantic hurricane, the record-breaking 2005 season included a named storm as late as January 2006! But she may well deliver a wallop to the eastern seaboard residents of New England will not soon forget: [Read more…]

Having now witnessed firsthand the effect Mourdock’s quip has on women, I can say I misjudged the profoundly offensive nature of his warped view and by extension the views of other GOP lawmakers. One women tried to explain to me why she could never explain it to me. Her point was I could never imagine the full effect, the wrenching almost supernatural and creepy punch in the gut, those words conveyed. Even if I had been raped by a man she correctly noted, “You can’t get pregnant, you don’t even have to worry about getting pregnant, so that wouldn’t be the half of it.” [Read more…]

I had a nice dinner and a long moonlit walk last night with a friend who might be loosely described as a Messianic Jew. The conversation strayed into things like equal pay, male reaction to women in the business world, and the subjugation of women over millennia. She’s proven herself to be an astute real estate investor so this is something she rightly resents.

I was thinking about all that this morning when the headline above jumped out in the daily Google search. Granted, it is an inflammatory title for a post, but it’s not mine! It’s the stated theology of a Senator (correction: senatorial candidate) from Indiana. He’s getting some shit for it too, but, imo, he’s not far off: [Read more…]

Again, ask Ed Brayton what real debates consist of, he was a debate coach and I don’t know much. My understanding is a body of fact exists that each side is held to and points are awarded, with a real winner and a real loser at the end of the night. What we call the Winner of these spectacles hinge mostly around what the most detached, uninformed voters pick up in style and body language from a few minutes of back and forth. In that inexact context this is quickly emerged as one of the key exchanges: [Read more…]

This was almost certainly not planned, and the timing could prove a hindrance to Mitt’s Festival of Lies tonight. No matter the motive, it underscores how far gone these shitheads really are, and it is despicable: [Read more…]